From the Chancellor

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your ongoing support for UW–Madison — with gifts, with advice, and with involvement. Alumni and friends are increasingly important to the life of the university, and I’m grateful for our engaged community of Badgers.

It has been a very exciting year for our university, and especially for our student body:

In 2017, UW–Madison received a record-breaking 35,614 applications for 6,600 spots.

Our freshman class is the largest in UW–Madison history.

Seventeen percent of freshmen and 28 percent of transfer students are first-generation college students.

The retention rate for the overall student population is 95 percent, and it’s even a little bit higher for students from targeted minority populations.

Time to graduation is at an all-time low.

The university graduated a record number of doctoral students in 2017 and ranks third in the nation in PhDs conferred.

One of my highest priorities is expanding need-based aid, and we’re trying to be innovative in reaching out to low- and moderate-income families. Thanks to alumni and donors, we have created 1,000 new scholarships over the last four years — support that will help to bring the cost of a UW–Madison education within reach for more of our students. These undergraduate and graduate students are not only the main beneficiaries of UW–Madison’s work; they’re also our future. As alumni, they’ll help Wisconsin, the nation, and the world address challenges we can’t imagine today.

UW–Madison continues to be among the world’s leading universities, and our success is due in no small part to alumni, donors, and friends who make the UW one of their priorities. Thank you.